


The Dowry of Shellfish

by worldturtling



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Marriage, Married Life, Possessive Behavior, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-17 00:54:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturtling/pseuds/worldturtling
Summary: How many times can Michael refer to Eleanor as his wife before it gets old? Trick question, the answer is never. Or, An au where Eleanor, Tahani and Michael run a badplace operation together and Eleanor is the low key queen. Snapshot fic.





	The Dowry of Shellfish

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just snippets and moments of how many ways Michael could refer to Eleanor as his wife. I also realize this is a stretch of characterization, but it was a fun idea to play around with! All mistakes etc are my own. This is more snapshots than plot!

“Really, Eleanor, it's not as if the shrimp is going to run away from you. ” Tahani laughs away from them. Eleanor sullenly glares at the formerly Tahani occupied space as Tahani herself and the pink poofs of her skirt strut away, and Michael knows there are only two options to put this fire out. He opts for the second one, because leaving Eleanor without any human companion for solace was a known danger.  He splays his hand on the sinuous curve of the small of Eleanor’s back and tilts her hips away from the snack table.

She’s holding her shrimp cocktail elegantly in her upturned wrist, and she angles her body gracefully away from the scene, caged in by Michael’s (much) longer arm.

“How about we do the speech now?” He prompts to her, and blond hair shakes.

“Make her give it this time, she’s all ruffled up for it.”

Working with Eleanor and Tahani was less frustrating than working with Demons. They themselves were endlessly creative, fun, a whirlwind of ideas full of soft lowgrade tortures, and wouldn’t repeat the same lines over and over again. Similarly, they were just as terrible as Michael felt sometimes, and it was definitely a fun ride.

In the same vein, Eleanor and Tahani were truly fantasitc wild fires who should never run into each other. And in that respects, Michael saw his role as this:

Rain.

Eleanor tilts her face up at him, her cheeks flush with wine and her lips tinged red and set in a line that has come to a decision without him. “I’m gonna do this now. You’re gonna to fork me tonight.”

Michael stares at her mouth. Right. Wine. Horny. Wife.

“We have to get through these batch of humans first.” He says, feeling the tightness of his collar around him. She smiles secretly, softly, as if she knows what he’s currently feeling. And who is he kidding, she probably does.

“You’re the best con artist sugar daddy a girl could ask for,” She says in a stumble of words, and his eyebrows meet his illusory hairline.

“I believe that’s husband, dear.”

-

They’ve turned this 100 demon to 4 humans ratio on its head. After a little bit of convincing, and really it wasn’t a lot of effort, Michael turned this outfit into a 3 man conshow and a hundred yuppies who sure as heck didn’t ever figure out they were torturing each other forever.

And really, Michael had to give credit where credit was due. Eleanor single handedly could make fifty people believe fifty different truths or lies at the same time. She could do it in her sleep. She could do it drunk, and she was, currently, on stage with a glass of shrimp discussing her best person sash.

She was a sexy bench, he had to admit.

And Tahani was just…effortless. The ruse he needed to really sell it. She practically believed it herself, even though they’d all been far more upfront with each other in the last several years than they had been the last three hundred.

“Did the children I saved from that sinkhole when I donated my last kidney thank me? With their smiles over my hospital bed,” Eleanor says with her own grin. Michael enjoys hearing the increasingly unpredictable ways she encountered death. This is the seventieth iteration of her own death he’s heard her recount. It’s spectacular.

-

She’s smiling brilliantly, beatifically at the crowd on their first night, and they smile at her, energy feeding both ways.

Michael has already discussed with Eleanor the first fifty steps of the fourteen billion point plan, (“that’s too many points, man, ya gotta wing it.”)

-

Jason?

That was several reboots ago. That was when they had Janet.

Well, they still had Janet. They just…worked around that aspect.

It’s not as if the residents knew what she was originally made for, after all.

And really, Michael owed a lot to Janet’s marriage to Jason. It had given him the idea, after all.

-

Loopholes are what Eleanor excelled at. And loopholes are what she gave to Michael’s efforts in undermining his boss.

Judges did what judges did. And that included eschewing out  marriage certificates.

Eleanor was an “I do” away from total immunity. And so Michael married her.

-

“I am Michael, the architect of this neighborhood, and this is my wife,and partner, Eleanor.”

-

Trevor shows up unannounced one afternoon. The details of the visit are a blur, and Eleanor seems to take control of most of it, excelling as Michael knew she would at going toe to toe with her demon counterparts with a fluency of their language that even eluded Michael sometimes.

It’s a droll and muted time for Michael until Trevor places a hand on her shoulder.

Michael stands. He pushes the chair back and grabs the back of Trevor’s neck, maneuvering him around and dislodging his grasp from Eleanor.

“Hey!”

“I think it’s time you leave my wife and I to our business now.”

-

Once, Eleanor is in a shrimp dispensary shop. That was what the iteration of this neighborhood was. Michael swore it was because of the high volume of people who had a lowgrade distaste for shellfish, but she suspected he had an ulterior motive. About her. She was not complaining.

She orders her shrimp with her cocktail glass.

Someone taps her shoulder and she turns. It’s not one of the humans she recognizes but she hasn’t recognized them all for a while. ( _She does start to recognize how ‘human’ is beginning to mean ‘other’ in her own internal vocabulary. She doesn’t want to think about this._ )

“You’re her.” The man says with a gaping mouth. She sizes him up.

“You don’t got a chance in hell, buddy.”

He nods.

“That was what the survivor of 802 said.”

-

Chidi? You don’t need to worry about a Chidi.

Okay. Michael wishes he could forget, but instead his hand burned with the signature he gave to sign him over to a medium place. Because Eleanor had looked at him with ideas. Ideas given to her by Chidi. So simple, yet so destructive.

A dowry gift then. A simple send off. He could be entombed amongst his books, and leave his ideas out of this forever. A simple request of his wife to be. Not so simple as an I do. A contractual agreement to be partners meant having each other’s backs. Chidi’s words felt too much like a hidden knife in their soon to be marriage bed.

-

“This is my wife” he repeats to the visiting human, this time spreading the thin line of his mouth into a grin that is more teeth than smile, and his hand curls around her shoulder very pointedly. He sees the outline of her blonde head at the bottom corner of his eye looking confused, uncomfortable, and uncertain. Maybe this was new to both of them, but it certainly didn’t feel wrong. It actually felt right, for once. Proper. The way things should be.

The human man looks confused. He looks a bit like Trent, the demon he had pose as a mailman who never learned more than two lines.

“Just because there’s a goalie doesn’t mean you can’t score, am I right?” He says with a genuine grin, and Michael squints and sees the alcohol floating in his afterlife vessel. That’s it. That’s gone now. That’ll definitely be going now. He can deal with Eleanor’s griping later, but Alcohol certainly made everything with a hundred humans too unpredictable.

-

“What was that?” Eleanor asks later, in their bedroom, which is really the house he created for her with modifications made. I.e., clown murals were now removed.  When prompted why she wouldn’t opt to let Michael build her a bigger and better house, with as many rooms as Tahani’s mansion, (more if they wanted to have some extra fun), Eleanor shrugged, sauntered over to him and reached to wrap both wrists around his neck, him acquiescing to bending down to her in the process, and said “don’t bother man, just think of it like we’re newly renovating newlyweds, we can have fights about the backsplash and everything.”  Then she had kissed him, which really delivered the suspicion envelope to his front door. The way Eleanor looked around when she said it made him think she was being quietly sentimental, and maybe didn’t want to show her weakness. So the clowns were removed, the stairs to the bedroom became a semi permanent installation, and Michael added a facet where all dishes would automatically wash themselves in their household.

The shrimp dispensary was also a permanent fixture in the kitchen.

“You’re one of those low key possessive types, aren’t you?” She says with a knowing look. Michael sighs. He'd come to terms with some things abut six hundred reboots in. 

“I built a calculated world and five million years of fruitless plots around you, Eleanor. You tell me.”

“I don’t belong to you, you know.” She says with a playful grin meant to tease. Her tone is light, like she’s taunting Michael into a game of hers, a small sexual fantasy perhaps. But her eyes betray her words. Michael only smiles down at her, and sees everything within him reflected back.

That night, she moves with a savage sort of taking, intent explained by actions against his body. He never lets her leave the bracket of his arms.

She looks at her neck the next morning with a sated sort of glazed expression, and Michael finds himself stroking the mirrored human teeth marks on his clavicle the whole next day.


End file.
